Daily Dose- Tuesday, July 28th

Like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings series, I return to you now at the turn of the tide. While the tide is turning on the field, the action off the field continues to worsen and it hit a new low yesterday in what was supposed to be a redeeming press conference where things would be righted.

But as we have all come to expect from the Mets, not so fast. While making the point that he was taken aback by the allegations presented before him by Daily News reporter Adam Rubin who broke the original story about Tony Bernazzard’s behavior, Omar Minaya decided that it would be best to blame Adam Rubin for all the mess and controversy created. That’s when all the fun started. Here is Adam Rubin’s response to all the allegations.

I was at work when I got an email from Mets.com and got the news that the Mets had finally done the obvious and called a press conference to fire Tony Bernazzard. I was overjoyed because I thought the Mets were going to sit on this investigation until the end of the season. Of course when I got home, and found out about what happened at the press conference I went back into depression mode. Even the simple task of firing a rogue employee is difficult for this team and organization and speaks to the lack of leadership in the higher positions of this team.
I’ve been a huge proponent of Omar Minaya but my theory on all this is you saw a man yesterday that knows that when Tony’s job was terminated he saw the writing on the wall on his own time in the Mets front office and decided to take a swipe at one of his biggest critics and detractors. While he did apologize with Jeff Wilpon close to his side, he did not back away from his allegations only admitting that the forum was not appropriate.
I don’t know how the Mets don’t get rid of Omar Minaya now after this meltdown as I’m sure talk radio and every other media outlet in New York will run with this story until something is done about him and his actions. It was bizarre, it was odd, it was a miscalculation. Basically it was standard Mets operating procedure for the season.


Fall out from this press conference could mean Omar Minaya getting the pink slip as well but Ken Davidoff gets into the job requirements for a possible replacement for the VP of Development position now vacated.

I couldn’t agree with Ken more. The Mets have not had the best drafts even while having the same kind of resources the Yankees and the Red Sox have. The new VP of development should be a guy who understands how to develop minor league players, not relationships with head bosses that complicate matters in places he should not even be involved in. The only way the VP of Development should be seen on the field is through the amount of great young players the minor league system he oversees pumps out to the major league level.



Michael Vick is now officially able to walk into an NFL roster as camps open up this week for the six week hell that is known as training camps. Finding work might be difficult, but the language in Roger Goodell’s conditional reinstatement might be beneficial to Michael Vick.

When I first heard about the conditional reinstatement I, like many, saw Week 6 and thought, wow 6 game suspension? I’m not a dog fighter nor do I condone Vick’s actions but I’ve always found it unfair that a man who financed the fighting of dogs and lied about it to his employers saw more jail time than a man who drove his car while drunk and killed another human being.
I realize trust is a very key issue in Vick’s case and brings to mind several questions about how honest he is when he says to Commissioner Goodell that he has learned his lesson from all this. He might, but the Commissioner, based on everything that has happened can’t take his word for it.
The language in the reinstatement leaves open the possibility that Vick can be reinstated and allowed to play in games sooner than week 6 because that is the deadline that Goodell has given himself to decide on whether Vick is, in his mind, ready to return to the privilege of playing in the NFL.
I’ve never understood handing out punishments in sports leagues because I’ve felt that the biggest thing lacking in any punishment is the ability to rehabilitate the person so that he will never do anything wrong again. With the two years he served and lost playing in football, and having lost all his worldly fortune, having to start back at 0, be broke and being the world’s foremost dog enemy, any person can come up to a commissioner and make some teary eyed speech and convince someone that they have learned their lesson. But I think Commissioner Goodell is doing the right thing here.
Vick lost that right to trust him when he lied to Goodell about the dog fighting operation and the intention of having a guy as respected as Tony Dungy as his mentor is to not only help Vick but secure Goodell as well. When it comes time for Goodell to make a decision on Vick, he will lean heavily on what Dungy says about his mentee and how far along in his rehab he is. If Dungy sees no real progress, then you can best believe Vick is going to be sitting on the pine. He has to go back to proving himself as a human being before being allowed to prove himself as a football player.
Of course getting a team to look past the media hassle he will surely bring, will be difficult but thus is the punishment for a guy who once was a huge part of the league’s future and is now relegated to being a sore spot for the league. Quite the fall for him but here’s hoping that rehab will get him back on his feet both on the field and off it.